And Now, Some Montreal Bagel Smack Talk

June 15, 2011

Park Slope restaurant owners aren’t the only ones talking smack this week. Over on Atlantic Avenue, Noah Bernamoff has registered his disapproval of B & B Empire Bistro, the newish bakery that purports to make authentic Montreal bagels.

The Mile End proprietor has leveled perhaps the ultimate insult at B & B’s creation, telling The Brooklyn Paper that “Frankly, it’s closer to a New York bagel than to a Montreal bagel.” The offending items, he went on, “aren’t charred enough, flat enough or sweet enough to deserve the Montreal label. They have some work ahead of themselves.”

“Themselves,” incidentally, means executive chef Ignat Kostov, a — gasp! — Bulgarian who uses a $100,000 custom-made wood-fired stove to produce his bagels. Bernamoff, as has widely been reported, prefers to leave his bagels to the French Canadians, and imports them from Montreal’s St-Viateur bakery. Whether Brooklyn Heights denizens will share in his indignation is a question yet to be answered, but Eat to Blog wasn’t impressed. “After eating this bagel,” blogger Donny wrote, “I can finally conclude that Montreal bagel is not for me.” The scallion cream cheese, however, “kicked ass.”

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